A Day Without Art/A Day With Art December 1, 2008

Where Tears Can't Stop by Carlos Alfonzo

December 1 is World AIDS Day as well as what was once known as A Day Without Art. That began December 1, 1989, in response to the AIDS crisis and in honor of all the artists who lost their lives or were affected by the disease. About 800 U.S. arts and AIDS groups participated. Nearly twenty years later, that number has grown to more than 8,000 national and international organizations now taking part, and A Day Without Art has evolved into A Day With(out) Art. Originally, an art object was cloaked in black for the day; now the emphasis is on proactive programming that relates to artists and AIDS.

When I lived in New York in the 1980s, the AIDS crisis was just beginning. There was fear and ignorance and young people leaving us much too soon. I did not know Carlos Alfonzo; the Cuban-born artist died of AIDS in 1991. His painting Where Tears Can't Stop (1986) hangs proudly in SAAM's Lincoln Gallery among other works of the twentieth century. I was rushing by it one day, as I had an appointment with another painting, so to speak, but it literally stopped me in my tracks. I stood in front of it and couldn't move. I've been trying to write about it ever since but always seemed to find excuses to write about something else.

Was it the painting itself or the story of the painter that drew me in? Alfonzo was born in Cuba and fled the Castro regime in 1980. The painting is full of blood and daggers, and swirls around like a life trying to find meaning and balance, whether in religion or the tarot. The colors are bright but the action is impulsive, jarring. A large tear shape dominates the left side of the painting, which is filled with images of eyes, limbs, crosses, even more tears. It also recalls the early belief that the AIDS virus was carried in the tears of the infected. Tears flow but who will be there to wipe them for you?

Alfonzo died five years after completing this work. We have the painting to look at every day of the year but we should all stand in front of it quietly for a moment or two on December 1. I doubt if the only tears will be on the canvas.

• World AIDS Day, Carlos Alfonzo, American Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Good Enough to Eat: Thanksgiving Menu by George Burr November 25, 2008

Thanksgiving Menu by George Elbert Burr

George Elbert Burr worked as an illustrator for several magazines including Harper's, Cosmopolitan, and something called Frank Leslie's Weekly Newspaper. (Winslow Homer illustrated for the paper as well; three examples of his work for Leslie are in SAAM's collection). Burr created this menu for a Thanksgiving dinner in 1905 that included consomme, English plum pudding, charlotte russe (a dessert of cream and ladyfingers), and of course, the turkey, illustrated here in a simple pen and ink and watercolor drawing. More than one hundred years later, the menu—as well as the drawing—holds its own.

Born in Ohio in 1859, Burr died in Arizona in 1939. In addition to this drawing, SAAM's collection contains nearly three hundred works by Burr. They range from moody aquatints of the American southwest to watercolors sketched on a grand tour of Europe.

Holiday Note: After you've completed your own Thanksgiving menu and want to walk off some of those extra calories come on down to SAAM. We're open from 11:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. Thanksgiving Day.

• Thanksgiving, George Elbert Burr, American Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Manhattan in Black and White and Color November 24, 2008

Georgia O'Keeffe's Manhattan

In a recent post I took a look at Arnold Ronnebeck's etching of Wall Street, made in 1925 when the native German artist was fairly new to Manhattan. He became a part of the circle of artists that formed around photographer Alfred Stieglitz, whose 291 Gallery on lower Fifth Avenue featured photographers Paul Strand and Ansel Adams, and painters Marsden Hartley, and Georgia O'Keeffe, among others. Ronnebeck's vision of New York City made me look again at one of the O'Keeffe paintings in SAAM's collection.

O'Keeffe's Manhattan was created for an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1932. If the flowers don’t seem like typical O’Keeffe, they’re not: she based them on paper and cloth decorative flowers created by Hispanic women in New Mexico. What we get is kind of a New York/New Mexico mash-up. I feel like I've wandered into a parade with paper flowers tossed out of high windows.

There's something uncanny in the vision of both artists. For both Ronnebeck and O'Keeffe, the city is defined by angles. In the Ronnebeck work, you feel dwarfed by the buildings; in O'Keeffe's the kaleidoscopic colors and tossed flowers produce a more positive feeling. O'Keeffe was clearly influenced by the light and the landscape of the Southwest. Ronnebeck, too, would find himself leaving Manhattan and moving west. But when he created the etching he titled Wall Street, he was living in the urban jungle, complete with its own distinctive form of wildlife, most notably bulls and bears.

Our exhibition Georgia O'Keeffe and Ansel Adams: Natural Affinities is on view in our galleries until January 4, 2009.

• Georgia O'Keeffe, Paul Strand, Ansel Adams, Arnold Ronnebeck, Marsden Hartley,
  Alfred Stieglitz, American Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum

SAAM Celebrates FotoWeek DC November 19, 2008

Fotoweek DC, a week-long celebration of photography here in the nation’s capital, is being celebrated at The American Art Museum with a series of nightly contemporary photo landscape projections on the walls of our Kogod Courtyard. The projected exhibition features work from the museum’s permanent collection by John Pfahl, Terry Evans, Mark Klett, and Barbara Bosworth, among others. NightGallery DC, part of FotoWeek DC, is taking place in the courtyard tonight from 5-7 p.m. and tomorrow from 5 to 8 p.m., which coincides with monthly jazz concert, Take Five!, with The LoveJoy Group.

In This Case: Quilts? Quilts! November 17, 2008

Quilts on Display at Luce

It's part of my job at the Luce Center for American Art's information desk to explain the concept of the Center to visitors. But I can tell how eager they are to begin exploring when, midway through our conversation, their eyes begin to wander. If they happen to notice a particular case in the craft section, the next question I hear is frequently, "Are those quilts?" They’re right! Part of reason they hesitate to identify the objects in case 57a is because they're stored in a way that perfectly captures both parts of the Luce Center's mission. It is really a treat to have seven quilts in the Luce Center, but fiber works are sensitive to light. The Luce Center's goals include both public access to a wider variety of artworks than is possible in traditional galleries as well as storage and protection of those works. Since the quilts are delicate, our conservators have recommended steps we can take to store them correctly.

The quilts are rolled up and covered with protective fabric. Then the roll is wrapped with a large photograph of the quilt. A smaller photograph that shows the entire quilt hangs nearby. (We also have a zoom feature on our web site and the computer kiosks located in the Center that allows users to zoom in on an image of the quilts, and all other objects, to see it in more detail.) Luce has come to a happy compromise between conservation and accessibility.

Making these quilts accessible in open storage has also allowed the Museum to share some of our favorite stories about American art. Quilt making has a long history in America; the earliest quilts in the Luce Center were made during the 1830s and 1840s when quilts were mainly made for utilitarian reasons. We also have more modern pieces that are more decorative in nature. Many of the traditional techniques have remained the same, passed down from generation to generation of women who quilted out of necessity, for recreation, and for self-expression. Consuelo Jiménez Underwood, who quilted Virgen de los Caminos in 1994 believes quilting to be a logical and traditional expression of her ideas, calling "el Hilo" (thread) the "authentic voice of universal womanhood." You can hear Underwood speak about her work in a short artist interview.

The Luce Center stores more than 3,300 artworks from the Museum’s permanent collection. These are works that would otherwise have a much more limited exposure to museum-goers. We have taken this opportunity to share as much of our collection as possible and in the safest way possible. In doing so, we can tell a greater number and richer variety of stories.

• Quilt, Consuelo Jiménez Underwood, Luce Center for American Art, American Art,
  Smithsonian American Art Museum